About

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I seem to believe that anything can be done well or poorly. As a result of my perfectionism and scientific curiosity, I often spend hours obsessively researching even the most mundane problems that crop up in my life — which air humidifier to buy? how to build a quiet PC that can run recent games?what mp3 bitrate should I use to compress my music? what could be causing vibrations on the steering wheel of my car?

I construct clever Google queries, read through hundreds of posts, engage in long and painful thought processes, and — when all else fails — I actually do something and see what happens. In the end, I usually come up with some sort of useful synthesis.

Since I am unable to break this habit of trying to do things the Proper Way, the least I can do is share the knowledge I’ve accumulated with others. So when I get an interesting result that I have not been able to find on the Internet, I will post it on this blog in the hopes of helping a few hundred other people with similar needs.

About me

My name is Tomasz P. Szynalski. I live in Wroclaw, Poland. I’m writing this blog in English because I want my posts to help the broadest group of people possible and because I want to promote the use of English as the language for the Internet.

I agree! This is a REALLY impressive blog. Your English is fantastic, as (on the limited amount of your blog I have read so far) are your analytical skill and ability to sift bullshit from sense in the goldpanning exercise that is surfing the internet. Keep it up!

Hello Tomek,
thank you for the typing program and links. I have shared our pages with ten friends learning English.
FSILanguage.com is a page you will enjoy.
If the first attempt to open it is unsuccessful, please don’t quit. It is great.
God bless you.

Bravo Tomasz on a fabulous blog.
I’ve been enjoying your monitor reviews. I was all set to buy a 2209wa and now I’m thinking more towards an LED backlit screen. Do you have experience with those? Are they safe for the eyes or as some claim does the flicker from the Pulse Width Modulation used for dimming cause headaches?

You are GREAT! Your posts on HTLAL are the cleverest on the site. You provided great advice and were very funny. I laughed so much that I spent a long time finding you. You are an extraordinary writer in English. I am currently trying to learn Polish. It is difficult for me to find a good audiobook in Polish. I saw the, “Proces – Kafka” 12 CD book as you recommended on Amazon. However, I was not sure of how to find the corresponding Polish translation. I searched by publisher to no avail. I am an intermediate level student of Polish. Maybe I could pay you to help me learn Polish? Maybe I could pay you to translate some jokes from English to Polish? Best wishes.
Cano.

Great job, all us perfectionists thank you for helping with the never ending search for the superior products and techniques for doing things. Unfortunately, new doesn’t mean better any more. Older products that were stellar, tend to remain “stellar’ for years — like certain Bose speaker-amplifier models. And I have AR2-A speakers from the 1963 vintage that sound better than most sound systems today. I listen to them daily for the last 49 years. That’s value.

Hi Tomasz,
I must say to you that words can never and will never be able to tell the thank you I have in my heart to you, you are a wonderful scientiest.
I have been treating acid reflux for the past 7 months but couldnt find a way round it with all kind of drugs and vitamins, but God used you to finally free me from this horrible stress that almost took my joy from me.
In one of your blogs, you mentioned flaxseed for gerd and the way you summerised it was amazing, and I tell you as soon as I started taking the flax seed 3 times daily for just 3 days, I have noticed an absolute esophagus pain free life.
I am so convinced that I have conqured gerd.
Thanks once again and I believe you are a special gift from God to mankind. Also thanks to your mother for passing this amazing medicinal food for an ailment that is so expensive to cure.
Icent Enaife London

I teach Highschool Physics in a school in Thailand. I have found your tone generator to be easily the easiest way for students to investigate resonance in pipes and i am using it this week to investigate frequency-dependent inductive and capacitative reactance in circuits. Thank you!

I’ve just read an article you wrote (http://goo.gl/CpmiMs) but I wasn’t able to leave a comment. So I looked you up online to ensure you’d read this: Those tips will really help me have my students detect unnecessary mistakes they usually make by not paying enough attention to patterns. I always tell them to watch and listen before trying their own sentences, but sometimes they seem to ignore the sample structures and use a lot of imagination combining a few words that wouldn’t make any sense to a native speaker. Well, in other words, thank you for the article!

Just want to say a quick THANK YOU for your writings about tinnitus – they have given me a lot of inspiration about how to “fight noise with noise” so to speak. If i ever get anywhere with my own sound experiments, i will surely share them with you for an opinion.

SUGGESTION: In your title above, I feel you should find a word more successful and triumphant than the word “Try”, which is defined as “an attempt or effort to do something”, as in the expression, “Well at least I tried”, which people say when the utterly fail at something.

At least here, you have not failed at all. The ongoing help you’ve giving others is real and wonderful. For example it enable me to find the source of strange sounds in my equipment, and to design filters needed, speeding my product toward production.

Tomasz, thank you for blogging about Tinnitus. I was recently diagnosed and it is frustrating and scary to think this problem might never go away. But I am glad to see lots of helpful and upbeat advice from you and others who have struggled with this mysterious health issue. Also, your use of English is excellent! (I’m a Polish-American and I only know a few words and phrases in Polish although my grandparents and parents were fluent in Polish.) Looking forward to more of your blog posts.

Tomasz, Thank you When I play your tone generator loudly Foy the dog next door. He stops his never ending yapping !!
You have saved his life 🙂
Also I have proven that with conditioning “you can teach an old dog new tricks”
Jon

Hi,
I use the very top tone and vary it around 18500 – 20100 with the arrow keys until he stops his infernal din ! I think he’s now understanding the link.
Pea sized brain !
(the dog’s is not much bigger)

Hello, Tomasz..this “app”, is wonderful, it is exactly what I was looking for.
Thank you so very much for your service.
This really helped me with onevof my projects.
Thanks again. Steve Aspen.Steveaspen@hotmail.com

Thank you for this website. I’ve just recently come upon this page and reading has helped me deal with my tinnitus. I worked around aircraft and jet engines for years, always with ear protection, and 5 years later this tinnitus comes up. My doctor has been unhelpful to say the least, so its’ up to me to do the research. Well spoken and written.

I work with a chamber music group in Rochester, New York, that is performing a piece for string quartet and “sine wave generator”. The sine tone has to shift pitch several times in synchrony with the quartet, so it has to be “performed” live. Your program is perfect, and we would like to use it for the performance!

I have made a small donation as an expression of our thanks. (I wish we could give you more, but we have a small budget.) All I ask is that you leave the website running until after October 15, when the performance is! 🙂

David — That’s very cool, thanks for writing! I don’t suppose there will be a recording of your performance that I could see? And thank you for the donation; I never got a notification; did you make it in your name? Anyway, best of luck with your performance.

Thanks for the website “http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/” When I try to donate, i meet some problem . It requires bill address which I can not provide since I am foreigner in AU . If there is a way that only requires card number card type and expire date and cvv

Hi Athos, sorry you’re having problems donating. I think you should try entering the address associated with your credit card — the address on file with your bank (in whatever country that is). Thanks for trying to donate, anyway!

Hi, can you please post your Steelcase Leap review? I just read the one on the Gesture from August and it says you planned to post one for the Leap soon. I’m currently deciding between these 2 chairs and your review would be a great help. Thanks.

I haven’t posted the review because there hasn’t been a lot of interest in my other reviews. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I decided on the Leap after extensively testing both chairs, but YMMV. Try to buy it from a vendor that will let you test and/or return the chair.

Your english and work is amazing! I can’t say enough, and I love the tone generator. I was going to make one but I really can’t think of anything yours doesn’t already have 🙂

I am similar in research/project craziness so I can appreciate that. It reflects in the great work you do and hopefully people can appreciate it!

I love languages and your comment about tools you used to learn English interests me. Do you have a good recommendation for Polish? I know, silly question to ask of a native speaker, but I’m always on the look out for great tools to learn new languages!

Thanks for your kind words, Geoff! Some of the stuff I wrote at Antimoon applies to learning other languages, including Polish, but if you’re thinking about specific resources for learning Polish, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I can definitely tell you that finding quality resources for Polish learners will be hard.

I saw this program online tone generator a few minutes ago and I tell you I like the program and I want to know if you have an offline version of tone generator licences for sale, and if the answer is yes what is the price ? . I usually buy 5 licences for my family’s personal computers. I did not see for sale info. Thanks

I was very excited to find your Online Tone Generator. I am conducting a class on the relation between music and physics. It is entitled: “An Astronomer, a Quantum Physicist and a Piano Tuner Walked into a Bar…”

This was to be a great way to demonstrate the interference waves that tuners use to tune pianos. I have found that the little school house where I am doing the classes does not have wifi so I can’t use your cool program by going on-line. Do you have this as an independent application that I could download and open in multiple windows. I use it now in two, three, four and five windows to demonstrate different tuning temperaments. The pure sine wave makes the concepts pop out at you!

Let me know if you have or know of such an application. My class starts the second week in February and I am very anxious to use this!!

It was a pleasure reading your chair reviews – they were detailed, with much research and effort gone into them, and well-written (congrats on your English proficiency!). Like another commenter, I am interested in your thoughts on the leap. If I may ask: if you were given the choice between a herman miller embody for ~$550 or a steelcase leap for ~250, what is your decision?

Hi Marcelo. Thanks for reading the reviews. For me, the Leap wins hands down. Even if they were the same price, I’d go for the Leap as I believe it is ergonomically superior. The Embody is too unforgiving and too limited in terms of the recline angle. It is better-looking, cooler, and probably better-made than Steelcase chairs. Right now I’m trying to get my second warranty service because my brand-new Leap keeps making loud clicky-clanky noises and the first repair didn’t help.

By the way, are you familiar with the Polish-Canadian musicologist & composer, Mieczyslave Kolinski? In 1959 he wrote an article proposing an equal temperament using the perfect fifth as the basis, that is the 7th root of 3/2 rather than the 12th root of 2. It works. I have been tuning that way for about 15 years. Lucas Mason, a tuner, composer and musicologist from New York wrote the definitive book about it, “The New Tuning”. Sounds like it would be right up your alley to look into it!